


Not the same alone

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blame the random pairing generator for this bit of angst. Donna meets a man in a bar who has lost more than her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the same alone

**Author's Note:**

> * * *

  
He was kind of cute, Donna thought, in a lost boy sort of way. No fashion sense. He wore a striped, red-white bicycle helmet that made him look rather younger than he probably was. His cheap brown suit reminded Donna of someone, or something. She wasn’t sure what. He sat at a corner table by himself, all hunkered around his drink. Donna recognised the look on his face; it was an expression she’d been seeing a lot lately; bereavement, sorrow, shock. It had been six months since the invasion, since the day the Earth was whisked across the stars to _elsewhere_ — or so they said. A lot of people still hadn’t recovered.

Donna knew she hadn’t.

Without quite knowing why, she sat down beside the man.

“Who’d you lose?” she asked.

He didn’t look up from his drink. He didn’t seem overly surprised or offended by Donna’s uninvited conversation.

“My dog,” he answered, in a voice that was clearer and more lucid than Donna had been expecting given the number of empty mugs crowding the table. She pushed a few of them aside to make room for her elbows on the dark, stained wood.

“Your dog?” she said, a bit disbelievingly.

He gazed into the murky brown depths of his drink. “Suppose it doesn’t mean much,” he said, “weighed against everything else.”

He looked up, meeting Donna’s eye, for an instant, before staring back into his beer. He was cute, to be sure, but his eyes were frightening; red, and unfocused from tears and alcohol. He looked absolutely broken, and if it were all over a dog, well… Donna was beginning to regret sitting down. She knew that some people got attached to their pets — she’d had a goldfish once, and had loved it dearly for the whole three days it had lived — but this man’s haunted gaze was something different. It looked like he’d been through the wars.

Of course, a lot of people looked like that these days, but most of them had real reason for it.

“Have you ever lost someone?” he asked, in a low voice.

“My dad,” Donna said, not thinking. The last word was clipped as she tried to stop. It wasn’t something she liked to talk about, or think about.

“Was it —”

“No, it was, well, close to two years now. It was very sudden.”

He nodded, firmly, as if he understood. “The Daleks killed my dog,” he said.

Donna stared at him and resisted the urge to slap him. Here she was, unburdening about her father’s death, and all he could go on and on about was his dead dog? But then, she had sat down hadn’t she? She had interrupted his grief.

Someone, sometime in the simpler past, had scratched a heart into the bar table they sat at. The shape was filled with the initials **RT + MS**. Donna traced the letters idly, wondering what fate that couple had met in this brave new world.

“I think you’re mad, the whole world,” she said, “flipping flying dustbins with plungers? Something in the water, or air pollution. That’s what they’re saying isn’t it? That it was all delusions caused by the exhaust from those ATMOS cars. Defective they were. All been recalled. And good riddance!”

“Is that what they’re saying?” the man asked. There was something in his voice, something dark and condescending that Donna didn’t like.

“That’s the truth!”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been there.”

“What?” she asked, “What did you say? Of course I was _there_ , you idiot, it was the whole world wasn’t it? How could I have not been _there_?? Where else would I have been???”

He looked like he was about to say something, but thought the better of it. His eyes briefly rose to the ceiling (off-white laminate and dim florescent lights), before lowering again to his half-empty mug. He looked utterly lost.

“I was hung-over,” Donna admitted. “Missed it all. I’d been having this fling, I think. That’s what my Mum said. And he put something in my drink! Thank god I didn’t end up pregnant. But then, at least he bothered to take me home. Some men just leave you behind the dumpster you know?”

The man shook his head slightly. Donna continued talking:

“Of course, I wanted to call the police, but right after what had _supposedly_ happened? The whole planet was running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. My Mum told me not to bother, like I was three she told me, and then when I wanted to go to the hospital she wouldn’t drive me. What kind of way is that to treat your daughter?”

The man shrugged.

“Gramps wasn’t much better, that’s what hurts, the pair of them walking around me on tip-toes, like they’re afraid of breaking me. I’m not a bloody china doll! Yes, it was awful, but it’s not like I’m having night terrors or PTS or something is it? And I’m not pregnant, and I didn’t pick up any kind of STD or something, so… why can’t we all just move on?”

She reached out and grabbed the half-empty mug from the man. He didn’t stop her. She lifted it towards her mouth, intent on downing the remains in one gulp, but thought the better of it. Six months ago, she wouldn’t have been afraid of sharing cups with a complete stranger. Six months ago, she was a different person and the world was a different place. Donna set the mug down. She went to the bar and got a drink of her own. Then she went back to the table in the corner with the sad dead-dog man. She wasn’t sure why.

“It’s hard to move on sometimes,” the man said when she sat down, “sometimes harder for the people left behind.”

“I haven’t left anyone behind,” said Donna. “In my whole life. For crying out loud, I’m still living at home. At my age!”

“But, sometimes,” said the man, “it’s harder to watch people being hurt than it is to be the person being hurt. Sometimes…”

“My father was…” he paused, as if searching for the words, “…a police officer. So was I, for awhile, following in his footsteps, but…”

“Your dog,” Donna asked, realisation dawning. She felt a twisting sensation in her throat and stomach, as if she’d put her foot in her mouth and then swallowed it. “was he a working dog?”

The man nodded. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I lost my partner,” he said in a whisper, “I… I lost all of them. She sent me away, knocked me out and hid me. I shouldn’t have lived. They were all screaming.”

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry. And I’ve been going on...”

“It’s all right, just, what happened brought it all back, and they killed my dog. He was all I had left really. We both remembered together, and now I’m all alone.”

“Hey,” said Donna, putting her hand over his, “it’s okay, I’m here.”

He smiled weakly.

“Donna,” she said.

“Andred.”

“I’ll buy the next round of drinks,” she said.

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=26076>


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